Does anyone have any experience with importing styled Word docs into InDesign?

Editors style their Word documents with some basic styles (Text, References, Headline, etc.) using a Word template that I created. Designers use import options to match the Word styles to the ID styles. This worked fine in Word 2004 and InDesign CS3: Word "text" style would map on import to the InDesign "text" style, even though they had totally different attributes. Superscripts, italics, etc. would be respected as local overrides in InDesign.

Then we upgraded to CS5. Automatic mapping on import no longer seems to work: After importing text, all the styles in InDesign have local overrides assigned to them that don't make sense (hyphenation exceptions, tab settings). So I'm left with importing the Word styles, using auto-renaming so that InDesign explicitly does NOT match styles.

Then delete the Word styles one by one from the paragraph style panel, replacing with the desired ID style.

This has gone on for several months and we've now upgraded to Office 2011 but that hasn't solved the problem.

With Word 2011 docx files, the import works almost like it did in CS3, the styles almost come in cleanly: If the style in Word has NO local overrides, such as italics or superscripts, the InDesign style is correctly applied. The problem is those local overrides in Word--InDesign not only respects the italic or superscript, it also respects the font attribute. All the Word styles are Times New Roman so all superscripts in InDesign are coming in as superscript + TNR. (see screenshot)

Are we left with our original work-around? Importing styles then manually deleting and replacing them?

This is frustrating because it used to be smooth and seamless and while some new features of CS5 are great, it's annoying that it's broken this fundamental function!

I've tried saving the Word files as doc or rtf instead of docx but this doesn't make a difference in this problem.

After importing text, all the styles in InDesign have local overrides assigned to them that don't make sense (hyphenation exceptions, tab settings).

If you are confident that the overrides induced by Word import should not be included in the InDesign styles, then why not simply return to the style-mapping-import workflow? Include a new step: "Clear all overrides after placing Word document." Or, alternately, I might run a script like PrepText first, then clear all remaining overrides.

This Word-file-import issue might be new to CS5 for English-language-only users, but I've been clearing all overrides (or, as above all remaining overrides) on Word documents in a wide variety of languages for some years now. I don't understand why

importing the Word styles, using auto-renaming so that InDesign explicitly does NOT match styles.

Then delete the Word styles one by one from the paragraph style panel, replacing with the desired ID style.

Joel, The problem is retaining some of the overrides, such as italics and superscripts, while clearing those I don't want, like the tab settings, hyphenation, and fonts.

I have written a script that sounds similar to PrepText that cycles through a variety of S&R functions in order to convert local italics/superscripts/etc. to character styles and then clears all overrides so it's not quite as manual as I made it out.

Still, it's an extra step when this used to come in seamlessly, without clearing overrides or any other tinkering.

It's frustrating when an upgrade breaks something that used to work so I was hoping someone would suggest something that would return it to its CS3 seamlessness.

Sorry, Allison, I should have sworn off posting on the Internet on a day when I've not had any caffiene at all. You made that completely clear in your original post, I just had a momentary lapse of reading comprehension.

Another possiblity for resolving your difficulties: To what extent do you have control over the workstations used by the editors? I've smoothed out some Word-file-import issues in the past by examining the normal.dot of some contributors and found that they've acquired years' worth of cruft, which in some cases (trial installs of translation memory tools, for example) has induced all kinds of style-override nonsense. Clearning 'em out has helped a great deal in a a number of cases. If your editors are inside your organization, or otherwise willing to submit to delousing of their Word templates, then it might reduce the frequency of spurious overrides being applied in InDesign upon placing your Word files, because you could ensure that the styles that were being altered by simply opening docs in Word and working on them actually had the same definitions in the Word document template as they did in InDesign.

I am uncertain, but I suspect that both the Word file format and the Word import filter in ID's Place tool are moving targets for developers on both sides. When I have some spare time I will do some test imports to see if I can find something worth a bug report, but to be honest, CS3 Word placing was never as seamless for me as it was for you. Zero of my contributors are working in English, so I've always had the create-charstyles-and-clear-the-rest-of-the-overrides step in my workflow, because even in the days of "seamless" CS3 import there would still be a lot of divergence induced by the fact that e.g. a Korean font would be named Gulim on one computer and 굴림 on the other computer. That still counts as an override, of course. So, welcome to my world, I guess.

Also, given that he's posted in this thread, I'm surprised that Bob hasn't already suggested InCopy to you. My exposure to it has been minimal, because I work for a nonprofit, and most of my contributors are independent contractors (meaning that it would be both too expensive and impracticable), but in the cases where I have used it, it's been pretty ideal for circumstances such as you describe.

Joel, thanks for following up. I think we're probably going to have to make the running of the "cleanup" script part of the workflow.

I have total control over the editor workstations and we've had a customized "normal.dot" for years. I just updated it for the new version of Word, starting from scratch to avoid brining in any corruption, so I don't think it's that in this case. I've definitely seen all manner of mess come in from outside contributors so I know of what you speak!

We also use InCopy once the stories are laid out in InDesign--editors put in their own corrections. I'd deliberately not introduced InCopy to the mix until the layout stage but maybe there's a compelling reason to have editors put their work into InCopy sooner? Many of the stories are not written by the editor but sent from freelancers, etc. who all use Word. Editors run macros we're written to clear out the crud then they tag the paragraphs with the provided styles then pass the files to designers for layout. So whether from Word into IC or Word into ID, someone's going to have to clean up what doesn't get imported correctly. At our company at least, that's safer left in the designer's hands.

Well, there you go, Bob - someone interested in improving this kind of workflow, who is already using it.

Likewise, Allison, your workflow sounds like the monolingual, not-nonprofit, InCopy-using counterpart to what we do here, and you're already using all of the tricks that I use, and some that I can't. I don't see any profit in changing where you involve InCopy, either. Unfortunately there is no universally-recognized emoticon for "world-weary shrug + wan smile" or I'd use it here.

After more digging and tinkering and importing lots and lots and lots of Word files, i think i have figured out the problem:

The styles in WORD need to be based on (no style). If the styles are based on each other or on Normal, InDesign sees almost everything in the style as a local override.

I rebuilt the Normal.dot with revised versions of my styles, basing them all on (no style) and now everything looks great in ID--superscripts and italics, etc. are retained as local overrides as desired; everything else* is ignored.

*OK, not everything is ignored. Alignment is carried through as an override, so the WORD styles need to use the same alignment definitions (eg, left aligned, or justified, or centered) as the InDesign style you want to map to.

*Numbered lists, such as references, need to have a list style defined in WORD. You can't use the regular bullet/numbering formatting, you have to use the outline numbering and define a custom list.

I've spent the better part of the day rebuilding templates, fixing macros, etc. but I think it's worth it since I'm dealing with dozens of editors and designers.

I should have been able to tell you about most of those things, but it's so long since I fixed the style-Based-On stuff in our .dot files that I forgot clean about it. Fortunately you don't have a significant percentage of contributors who have right-to-left keyboards turned on in Windows, or you'd have potentially unresolvable conflicts between alignment in text style and direction of text flow.

Nice to know about the numbered list thing, though - I'd just been including "Convert all auto-bullets and auto-numbering to text before exporting RTF" in our workflow, I didn't know that automation in numbered lists could be preserved in any way. Thanks for posting that!

Interestingly (is that a word?), your mention of "Convert all auto-bullets and auto-numbering to text before exporting RTF" prompted me to check the button in the InDesign import options to convert bullets and numbers to text and that worked as well. I thought that it would make the auto bullets into actual bullets but it didn't. It let the auto bullets in the ID style shine through without bringing in the overrides it had previously been bringing in from Word!

I had the same problem, so I looked up this forum. After reading your post, then Bob's, I found that Bob is right when he says:

"Do you have any styles based on Basic Character Style? If so, change it to none. And make sure you don’t have any character, paragraph or object style chosen when placing."

He is talking about CHARACTER Style in the first question. Alison, you answered :

"Thanks, but unfortunately that isn't the problem. All styles are based on either No Paragraph Style, or on one of the other styles (Text Bullet is based on Text, for instance)." YOU are referring to the Paragraph Style here, not the CHARACTER style palette that Bob is. Click on your text that is not abiding by your paragraph style, open your CHARACTER style palette and see what it says. Mine was highlighted with the wrong CHARACTER style which was making my text italic, even though the character component in my paragraphc style was NOT defined as italic. Once I switched the CHARACTER style to "none", everything straightened out. So the Character Styles trump the Paragraph Styles, it seems to me and you better have them both open if you are importing text from Word.

FYI, this page is probably the most valuable page I've ever found on this site. The secret? You guys (and gals) are knowledgeable. You listen carefully to what's being said so you don't offer solutions she's already tried or that aren't relevant. You give detailed answers that don't leave the person wondering how to implement them. And you're relaxed, friendly and playful, too. What beauty and value that brings to a discussion like this. Way to go!

Just as an FYI, I was able to resolve formatting issues in InDesign by opening the word file and clicking Change Styles > Style Set > Reset to Quick Styles from template. Was having trouble with italics showing up in InDesign when imported. Hope this helps

I'm an author / publisher. I write in Word and I publish with InDesign. When I'm in the review stages, I like to edit my text in Word, so I export the text as an RTF. When I import it back into InDeisgn I often find that some of the styles have annoying overrides from Word that break things. (1) Paragraph style stuff about hyphenation and (2) Characters style stuff about Character direction: Left-to-Right style.

* Easy global fix: select the whole text open the Window | Style | Paragraph window, and click the button on the bottom to remove all overrides. And do the same for the Window | Style | Character window. Before doing this, I like to check that I don’t have any italics that are in the file as overrides rather than being in there as part of a header style or as part of the Emphasis style that I try to use throughout the text instead of just an italic override. It makes me uneasy to remove all overrides, as I always worry there might be an important one I could have kept.

* (1) Specific fix for the hyphenation overrides: Make sure the hyphenation settings in the individual InDesign paragraph styles match, so far as possible, the Word global hyphenation settings in the Page Layout | Hyphenation dialog of Word. InDesign will import any Word hyphenation settings that don’t match the InDesign doc styles as overrides.

Specifically, set InDesign Hyphen Limit to ( say) 1 and set Word | Hyphenation | Hyphenation Options | Limit consecutive hyphens to the same number (say) 1. Also set InDesign Paragraph Style Hyphenation | Hyphenation Zone to (say) 0.5” and set Word | Hyphenation | Hyphenation Options | Hyphenation Zone to the same number (say) 0.5”. And turn off all the InDesign optional hyphenation check boxes at the bottom of the dialog, and the turn off the two check boxes in the Word Hyphenation Options box as well.In Word you should also set Hyphenation | Automatic. If you cautiously set Word Hyphenation | None the import will throw a “Hyphenation” override on the hyphenated paragraph styles, even though this maikes no sense.

You may still pick up some hyphenation related overrides on your heder styles, if you have set the headers not to hyphenate. You can either dump the overrides in InDesign or you can set your header styles to hyphenate…and be careful not have any headers actually be longer than one line.

(2) I still haven't found the fix for the Left-to-Right text override.

I'm facing a similar issue - one that I think is much simpler and should have a simple solution, but I've not found one. This involves Character style fonts only.

Workflow:

Word 2011 and InDesign CS6 & CC, all for Mac.

Start with Styled Word template with pre-defined Paragraph and Character styles. Formatters use this template to apply styles to a manuscript. There are NO local formattting overrides allowed. Everything is done with P & C styles. Existing local overrides are replaced with Character styles in the Word doc. Most body text in Word is Times New Roman and double spaced for copyediting. Character styles are based on "Underlying Properties"

Styled Word doc us poured into InDesign. Most attributes are the same in Word and InDesign, but Body fonts change to various other options. Adobe Garamond Pro for example. Double spacing is also removed.

Paragraph styles work just fine. But Character style attributes override the font to be Times New Roman instead of AGP (or whatever) as defined in the InDesign character styles. No matter what I do, I can't get the text to import without these overrides. Clearing the overrides changes the text to the correct font, but this has to be done manually.

This seems so simple, but from this thread it seems there's no way around it unless I use a script. I think the "Underlying Properties" in Word might be an issue, but if I don't use that setting, what DO I use?